CRASH+SUES, the award-winning full-service postproduction company, is responding to an influx of independent film and documentary work with the launch of a sister company, CS Films. The new division, headed up by producer Amanda Burgland, is structured to meet the specific needs of the growing Midwest indie film community with the same caliber of service that CRASH+SUES core client base of advertising agencies and marketers have come to expect.
“CRASH+SUES is dedicated to providing our clients with the best product, and you can look forward to that same quality service from our sister company, CS Films,” says Burgland. “We are tremendously excited to introduce this new addition to our family while remaining committed to serving the commercial arena as strongly as we have over the past two decades.”
“The demand for turn-key post services for independent film has grown dramatically in recent years, so we felt it was time to create a new division that responds directly to this market’s specific needs,” notes CEO Heidi Mae Habben who recently acquired ownership of the company. “CS Films and CRASH+SUES are both structured to provide their respective markets with top-caliber services, while maximizing workflow under the same roof. Together they provide a unique, open-architecture collaborative resource.”
CRASH+SUES spent eight months designing, updating, and restructuring a new layout for its expansive facility, purchasing an Isilon system to boost storage for long-form projects. The company is currently remodeling its Smoke suite and making a final decision on an additional color correction system. CRASH+SUES now has the ability to work with HDCAM-SR and Blu-ray DVD formats and provide HD Closed Captioning.
Even before CS Films’ official launch, CRASH+SUES had added a number of recent independent film credits to its roster. One of the many feature-length films the company has worked on is the documentary “Snuff,” which explores whether legendary ‘snuff’ films actually do exist. CRASH+SUES reworked the original creative edit, designed graphics, performed color correction and audio sweetening, provided the final online, and duplicated the feature which has been accepted in over a dozen film festivals and netted several awards. “Snuff” has had limited theatrical release in both North and South America, full North American and Southeast Asian distribution, and was one of the Top 50 streamed movies on Netflix in 2008.
For the teen feature “Lights Out” from Whitehorse Productions, CRASH+SUES pulled scores of mattes, generated snow and provided extensive visual effects for the blizzard scenes, and performed the color correction while its sibling audio house, Echo Boys, furnished the sound design and mix. CRASH+SUES also performed color correction for the feature “Holiday Beach,” a thriller set in Alaska during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Lotology,” a quirky 30-minute documentary from creatives at agency Colle + McVoy about people who hoard all shapes and sizes of lottery tickets, called upon CRASH+SUES for color correction, FX, finishing, and a cleverly animated title sequence featuring dozens of offbeat scratch cards. The short film is currently on the film-festival circuit.
Recently CRASH+SUES lent their color correction, FX, and online finishing talents to “Four Boxes,” a morally-ambiguous “film gris” feature that premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin earlier this year and played at the Minneapolis St. Paul Independent Film Festival in April. The company also color corrected and finished the thriller’s trailer and web content in Smoke.
CS Films completed their first official feature, Phasma Ex Machina this fall with the help of SUE on color and Mark Anderson on the online edit. Phasma was chosen as one of ten independent films to be featured at IFP NY and is now running full speed through the festival circuit.
“The launch of CS Films expands CRASH+SUES into a collaborative family of companies that services specific genres, while still focusing of the unique needs of each market,” notes Habben. “So whether it’s a 30-second spot, web video, or a feature film we use our two decades of postproduction experience to make your project shine.” “CRASH+SUES has always been about giving back to the community, so we’re especially pleased that CS Films is associated with the filmmakers of tomorrow,” Habben adds. “We’re delighted to give up-and-coming indie talent the benefit of our postproduction expertise and cost-effective workflows so they can maximize the production value of their long form work.”